In a perfect world, your book about “X” hits the market exactly when the readership is saying, “We want a book about X!” But popularity can be a double-eged sword…. hear discussions on the pros and cons of being popular — and why sometimes being “in” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

SF these days is full of the moral dilemmas that the general public shrinks from. Why is science fiction good at talking about things people don’t want to address? Does SF deal with such matters directly or metaphorically (i.e., coded in the language of the genre)? Are those aliens really aliens or are they standing in for someone else?